Conversations
by C. A. Brown
Summary: WIP - After Africa. After she knows. During his "moments" of clarity. Before forgiveness. Spoilers for season 6 & some of season 7. *Updated* 08-29-02: Chapter 2
1. Buffy and Dawn

Title: Conversations 1/?   
Author: C. A. Brown   
Rating: PG (at least for now)   
Summary: After Africa. After she knows. During his "moments" of clarity. Before forgiveness.   
Written because, more than anything, I just want Spike and Buffy to _talk_ to each other.   
Part One of (possibly) three parts. All parts can be found on my web page at:   
http://users.dialupnet.com/cbrownjc1/hodgepodge/index.html   
Spoilers: All for season six. Up to the latest news and rumors for season seven.   
Disclaimer: Joss owns them. I don't. End of story.   
Distribution: Please ask first.   
Feedback: Please. How can I know if it sucks or not?   
Notes: This is my first time writing _Buffy_ fanfiction. I don't know if I completely have all   
the voices of the characters, but I'm trying hard to. Also, this story is not beta-ed. If you see   
any glaringly obvious mistakes, please just e-mail, or review and tell me. 

* * * * * * * 

Dawn Summers watched her sister head for the front door, a large brown grocery bag in her arms. "Where are you going?" 

"Just out for a little while. I'll stop back in for you, and take you to patrol with me tonight, okay?" 

"You're going to see Spike, aren't you?" 

Buffy stopped by the door and turned back to face her little sister, her eyebrows raised, questioning. Answering the silent query, Dawn gestured to the shopping bag in Buffy's arms. "Hot Wings. Extra spicy, which you _hate._ I could smell them when you walked through the dining room." 

Buffy's lips curled into a lopsided smile. Shrug. "I've got some pints of blood in here too. The Hot Wings are just . . . ." Buffy shrugged again, her voice trailing off. 

Dawn, her arms now folded, eyes hard, said nothing. 

Buffy put the bag down, and sighed. "Dawn, look--" 

"No," Dawn said firmly, shaking her head. The anger, mixed with disappointment was Dawn's main emotion whenever the subject of Spike had ever come up, especially this past week. Buffy wondered what it said that her sister apparently felt more betrayed and angry 

_and hurt_

by what had happened between her and Spike in the bathroom upstairs, than _she_ did lately. 

Or, maybe she was just trying to think of it less than Dawn was. 

Especially now. 

They still didn't know where he had gone to. When he had come back. How _long_ he'd been back. When Buffy had asked him, before, he had babbled: "Yesterday. A month. Don't really know. Days, like months now." 

She hadn't understood what he had meant at the time, and his answer had annoyed her. 

After she knew, she understood. As best she was able to, at least. 

_Days, like months now . . ._

She told the others, two days later. Willow and Giles were still in England, but she'd told Anya, Xander and Dawn. Even though she'd promised him. Even though he had begged her not to. 

_Don't tell them. Don't let Dawn know 'bout it,_ he'd rasped, voice breaking. 

_Like you didn't want to tell me, Spike?_ Buffy had wanted to ask. _He didn't want to tell me, didn't want me to know, tried to hide it . . . ._

Anya knew. Had known immediately, as it turned out. Advantage of being a demon. Getting the lowdown on violations of the laws of physics before anyone else. 

Xander was thrown by it, though the fact of it hadn't tempered his hatred for Spike. Buffy doubted even a rip in the fabric of reality could do that. 

Dawn's reaction had been a surprise, mostly because there wasn't one. She still seem to regard Spike in the same way she had when she'd finally come face to face with him again for the first time since he had left, and had threatened to kill him: anger, and unforgiveness. 

And Buffy herself? How was Buffy Summers handling the news that her former mortal enemy/annoyance/stalker/lover had gone and reclaimed his human soul, on purpose, for reasons she did not completely know, but suspected? 

If Spike were more lucid, he would be able to tell her what she was feeling, complete with snarky commentary. Because she had no words to describe her jumbled mass of feelings. 

"Why are you doing this?" Dawn was now asking, arms folded in stubborn defiance. 

"Dawn--" hesitant. 

"_No. Why,_ Buffy? After what happened? After what he did to you? Does having a soul change any of that? Does it _really_ make you forgive him? Just like _that?_" 

_Forgive him?_ Do _I forgive him?_

She closed her eyes for a moment, and she could see it again, as if it had happened yesterday 

_yesterday, a month, don't really know_

the cold tile on her sore back, the pain from hitting the side of the tub. 

His face, above her. Pale. Human. Wild-eyed. 

Not stopping, when she had begged him 

_trusted him_

to. 

Her stomach dropped. Deep breath. She reached down, picked up the grocery bag, and opened the front door to leave. "No, Dawn. I don't forgive him." 

Dawn shook her head in confusion. "Then, why?" 

Buffy paused, and she saw him again, in her minds eye. Laying in an alley, beaten, bloody from her fists. Trying to smile at her, not with malice, but with love. Forgiveness. 

_Love. Give. Forgive._

Why? 

She looked back at her sister. Open. "Because I have to try, Dawn. Because I _want_ to forgive him." 

* * * * * * * 

_End part one_


	2. Spike and his thoughts

Conversations 2/? 

Disclaimers: In part one. 

Thanks for the reviews! (The _both_ of you!) Please, more! I like to know how I'm doing. It's no lie that more feedback makes a person write faster. 

Note: This chapter is a little weird; only cause its kind-of hard to write the mind and thoughts of a Vampire who, at this point, is as "mad as a hatter."   


*** * * * * * ***   
  
_These are the times that try men's souls._ --- Thomas Paine, _The Crisis_

  
*** * ***

To blame it mainly on the faces would be overstating the matter. 

The faces did run though his mind. Every life he had taken. Like a roundabout, neither beginning, nor ending. Continuous. 

However, many of them were very abstract. Blurry. Many of them he had noticed out of their looks, be it either for their beauty, or lack there of. A handful he had felt a desire for, right before he'd taken their life. Like Nikki. 

_I could have danced all night with that one._

However, a large majority of them he had hardly glanced at twice. They were either food, or enemies who were a threat his unlife. Not people one took the time to notice anything about. 

He'd never played with his prey . . . the way _he_ had. 

No, it wasn't the faces. 

*** * ***

The actual acts of killing 

_murder_

which came with the faces would be more accurate to focus the blame of it on, though again, not completely. During the times he would come back to himself, like now, he could 

_try to_

rationalize it. He was a Vampire. He had had no soul. He was a creature whose very nature was evil, was to kill. One killed to feed, to do what had to be done to survive. 

_You know what I am._

Yes, he could rationalize it. He'd always been good at that. It didn't take the pain of it away from his dead heart. However, it could ease his mind when he could feel his control slipping again; feel the emotions of guilt and remorse washing over him, being to rack his body. 

Some level of control. 

*** * ***

The voices, however. 

Yeah. 

They were a different matter. 

_They_ were everything. 

_They_ were always there. 

_Always_ there. 

Different accents, different languages. Some of which he understood, learned fluently by the time he was a young man and Dru had come and claimed his human life. 

Voices of the dead. Long dead. His victims. 

Sometimes they came in whispers, like a warning in the dark, 

. _. . don't, please don't . . ._   
_. . . I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . ._   
_. . . please, I'll do anything . . ._   
_. . . don't hurt me . . ._

sometimes, so loud his ears felt as if they would bleed 

_. . . stop, stop, please stop . . ._   
_. . . don't kill me . . ._   
_. . . please don't kill me . . ._   
_. . . please, Please, PLEASE! . . ._

In his mind, ringing in his ears. Pleading. Crying, begging, in pain. 

Screaming. Always, screaming. 

And this time, he could not help but listen. Here, now, never giving him a moment's peace. A cacophony of humanity. Thousands of voices, in various degrees of suffering. 

As a human, he had believed in the power of words. 

As a vampire, he had known the advantage of using the right words against those he hated. 

And now, with his soul now returned to him, it was the words of his victims that haunted him night and day. Drove him again, now, to the floor of his new home, against the far wall, sobbing. Knees to his chest, hands over his ears, as if trying to drown out the sounds of the people whose lives he had taken, calling to him for help, for mercy. 

_. . . I'll do anything . . ._   
_. . . don't do this, please . . ._   
_…. have mercy, have mercy . . ._

"Please, stop," Spike whispered, talking again to the thousands no longer there, except in his memory of them. "Please leave me alone." 

They never listened. 

And why should they? He hadn't, when he'd killed them. 

He had done things, punished himself for what he had done for over a century in trying to appease the voices, to make them leave him alone. Forms of penance, as he saw them. The first day in Africa, the morning after he had gotten what he had gone to seek, he had purposely set his skin on fire from the rising sun. 

He had spent two weeks in a small hut, in the small village near the restoration demon's cave, recovering from that incident. 

His chest and hands were still recovering from the incident with the cross from about a week ago. Buffy had been there for that act of penance. He had finally sought her out, after their first accidental meeting, which he'd hardly been lucid for. However, he knew that he was going to have to, sooner or later, start doing what he had gone and gotten the soul for. What he had finally come back to Sunnydale for. 

To take care of Buffy. 

Even though he now understood why she could never love him. 

Even though, deep down, he didn't want her to have anything to do with him. 

He would help her because he had made a promise to himself that he always would. And, if one thing remained constant from before and after his trip to Africa, it was his ability to try and keep a promise. 

It was the only think that kept him from staying outside that first morning and having the sun finish the job it had started. 

He hadn't told her about his acquisition. Didn't want her to know. 

Didn't matter. After the incident with Wrom-now-human Ronnie, and what had happened in the church afterwards, she had figured it out. Still made him say it, tell her himself, but he could see that she knew anyway. 

And he couldn't lie to her. She'd always seen though them before. And the truth was in his eyes, in his burnt flesh, from the cross she had pulled him away from. 

Thought of Buffy always took him where he never wanted to go. Back to that night, to the bathroom upstairs, in her house. The thing that had brought about his new transformation, to the voices ever 

_whispering-crying-screaming_

in his head. 

He knew he could never make up what he had done to her. 

Even more, he didn't know if he even wanted her to forgive him. 

Ever. 

Yes, he understood now. Clarity still, in moments. He truly was beneath her, just as she has always acted. Had said as much. 

_It would never be you Spike.___

_. . . you're a killer . . ._   
_. . . you're nothing . . ._   
_. . . you're not human . . ._   
_. . . you're just a thing . . ._   
_. . . you're and evil, disgusting thing . . .___

_You're beneath me._

Yes, beneath her, beneath them, beneath them all. He'd always had been, whether he was a human and a bloody awful poet, or a pathetic excuse for a Vampire. 

He was nothing. 

The soul only made him feel it more keenly than he had before. 

The dim light of the high school basement enveloped him, his thought, his mind, his sanity, in a cocoon of bitter refection and remorse. The voices his only company, the voice of the woman he had loved - 

_- no, still love. Still loved, and had betrayed –_

above all the others now. Louder, and louder and – 

"Spike?" 

Spike raised his haggard face, and looked up into the one of the woman who he was enduring this for, would endure anything for. 

Whom he could never make anything up to. 

"Buffy?" he choked. 

She smiled at him. A small, gentle smile. Quiet. "Hey. I brought you some food." 

*** * * * ***

End chapter two 

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